COVID19: Limassol school clusters raise concern

COVID-19 clusters have been detected at two Limassol primary schools, with one of them forced to close it emerged on Wednesday.

Health authorities were alerted when COVID-19 cases were found among pupils at the Melina Merkouri and Ayios Georgios primary schools, both in the village of Polemidia in the Limassol district.

All pupils at Ayios Georgios remained home on Wednesday while only around 35 of the 200 at Melina Merkouri showed up for class.

The Health Ministry’s track and trace team are working on finding contacts of the families involved.

In comments to Philenews, chairman of the Polemidia school board, Andreas Theodorou, said the school could not provide an accurate number of infections as authorities were in the process of tracing the contacts of previously confirmed cases.

“But there is no reason to panic. We are doing what protocols dictate … disinfecting all areas. I think the situation is manageable,” said Theodorou.

The Polemidia school board did not say when the cases were detected but it is understood the first infections were found last week.

Limassol’s COVID-19 outbreak is of concern to scientists, as the district has consistently generated a higher test positivity rate compared to other areas of the Republic.

Cases from Limassol represent two-thirds of all daily COVID-19 infections with the positivity rate rising from an average of 0.5% in previous weeks to 0.96% on Tuesday.

COVID-19 infections remain triple digits, jumping to 176 on Tuesday.

Primary school students, along with the high school graduates returned to class on 8 February.